Hose assemblies for conveying fuel and other corrosive fluids are well known in the art. These types of hose assemblies are exposed to a variety of fuel mixtures, fuel additives, and chemicals in addition to being exposed to extreme pressures, temperatures, and environmental conditions. Further, these hose assemblies are subjected to physical stresses, such as bending, repeated movement, and forces. Accordingly, these hose assemblies should be resistant to chemical and physical degradation.
These types of hose assemblies typically include a hose formed from fluoropolymers, such as polytetrafluoroethylene. Fluoropolymers are utilized for many hose applications. However, fluoropolymers have relatively low tensile strength, which can cause hose assemblies including hoses formed from fluoropolymers to have low hoop strength and, consequently, can be susceptible to kinking and other problems.
As such, these hose assemblies have been designed to provide additional strength, durability, and kink resistance to a hose comprising fluoropolymers. For example, hose assemblies including hoses having a plurality of convolutions can be used to increase the strength, durability, and kink resistance of the hose assemblies. However, hoses having a plurality of convolutions can cause fluidic turbulence. As another example, a spring guard can be included in hose assemblies to provide additional strength, durability, and kink resistance to hoses comprising fluoropolymers; however, the spring guard increases the cost of manufacturing.
In addition, hose assemblies can include one or more reinforcing layers to provide additional strength, durability, and kink resistance. Typically, as a number of the reinforcing layers increase, strength, durability, and kink resistance of the hose assembly increases. However, increasing the number of the reinforcing layers reduces flexibility of the hose assembly such that a bend radius of these hose assemblies is limited.
Also, as the number of the reinforcing layers increase, a method of forming such hose assemblies typically becomes increasingly complex and costly. As each individual reinforcing layer is added, an emulsion composition or a tie layer is typically required to bond the individual reinforcing layers together. As such, the method typically includes many complicated steps and precludes use of additional reinforcing layers without additional applications of the emulsion composition or tie layers. Also, the emulsion composition can fail to facilitate consistent wetting of the hose and the reinforcing layers, which consequently can cause the hose to delaminate from the reinforcing layers, which, in turn, can cause the hose to kink or even tear.
As such, there remains an opportunity to develop a hose assembly and a method of forming the hose assembly, which resistant to kinking, while possessing increased flexibility and bending properties.